RESEARCH OVERVIEW: RESEARCH PROCESS

As mentioned in the two previous chapters, this study focuses on an organisation in the rural community across Thailand where tradition and culture are still alive in the community and its people. BOR WORN or HTS Organisation is therefore an ideal organisation in the community, which has been related to human beings and been a part of Thai social life for more than two hundred years. It is interesting to study how it has remained in Thai society – and especially embedded in the people in rural areas - even through a period of globalisation. To do this, theories of learning, both individual and social, which occurs in every organisation, together with the conceptual framework, as outlined in Chapter Two, has been explored and revealed as a guide to understanding the research process and research findings. The particular qualitative research methodology of ethnography and the use of the concept of communities of practice (CoPs) were chosen as the means to achieve this aim.

A. Research Paradigm: Interpretivist Paradigm

As Walsh (2001) stated, knowledge and understanding of research methods is important to a researchers life; it will help the researcher gain an insight into research knowledge and help them to think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of reported research. Creswell (2003) also suggests that the researcher needs to understand and consider three framework elements before doing research: philosophical assumptions about what constitutes knowledge claims; strategies of inquiry about general procedures of research, and details of data collection and analysis and writing.

Knowledge claims mean that the researcher will start a project with certain assumptions about how they will learn and what they will learn during this inquiry. The researcher needs to know about research philosophy that describes the theory of research in a particular field and what assumptions underlie it.

The research philosophy, or what might be called the ‘research paradigm’, is a set of beliefs about the world and describes the nature of knowledge and about how research should be conducted (Hussey and Hussey, 1997; Guba and Lincoln, 1994 as cited in Denzin and Lincoln, 1998, p.107). This means that research paradigms will be reflected in the way of research design (framework) comprising an accepted set of theories, how to collect data (methods) and ways of defining data (analysis). It is important for researchers to recognise and understand their personal paradigm as this will shape their research (Hussey and Hussey, 1997). Two primary alternative paradigms, which have long been debated among research philosophers, are the positivist or quantitative paradigm and the phenomenological (interpretivist) or qualitative paradigm.

Initially, this study is based on the interpretivist paradigm, which adopts qualitative approaches to understanding human behaviour from the participants’ own frame of reference. Two philosophical assumptions - ontology and epistemology - are used to examine how human beings come to know about their world (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Creswell, 1998). Ontology concerns the nature of reality and describes what researchers identify as ‘real’

and what we can study (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.19; Delanty and Strydom, 2003, p.6). Epistemology is a theory about the nature of knowledge; it describes who can be a knower and what can be known (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998;

Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2004) and also the relationship of the researcher to the subject researched (Trochim, 2001; Miller, 2003).

The notion of intersubjectivity raises fundamental epistemological and ontological questions (Pierson, 2011). As Unger (2005) explains intersubjectivity reflects the notion that all of people’s actions, behaviours, intentions, and experiences are constitutive of this life world and cannot be separated from it or that all of human action (in the broad sense) at once constitutes and at the same time is constituted through these intersubjective fields of meaning. This has implications for both ontology and epistemology. First, ontologically, it is concerned with how individuals come to know one another (Pierson, 2011) and how meaning is socially constituted within fields of common meanings (Unger, 2005). The second implication concerns the epistemological consequences for the methodological position of the researcher (Unger, 2005), that is, how that knowing affects action (Pierson, 2011).

Due to the ontological and epistemological assumptions and intersubjective nature of this research as stated above, I recognise and understand that my personal paradigm is interpretivist. Concerning the ontological assumption, I consider that the world is socially constructed and only understood by examining the perceptions of the human actors. I am a part of the study areas;

four HTS Organisations in the rural communities across Thailand, which is being researched. I was interested to study how people participate, communicate and are involved in the social context that has become a part of the learning organisation. I also had the opportunity to participate with the members of the organisation as the participant in some of the community’s activities by sharing my knowledge, ideas and experience and reviewing the interpretations and analysis during the data analysis and writing up process.

Likewise, the epistemological assumption concerns how to understand the nature of knowledge and interpret qualitative data (Stephens, 2009). This involves an examination of the relationship between the researcher and that which is being researched (Hussey and Hussey, 1997). In this study, I interacted with the subjects of the study; HTS Organisation, including villagers, monks, teachers and students as the members of the organisation. Within the area of organisational learning, relationship as an intersubjective processes between individuals, communities, organisations and society is considered an integral element of the learning organisation. In other words, I am, because of my presence, part of the intersubjective construction of meaning. It also includes how the relationship between myself, as a researcher, and the

members of an organisation will have an impact on how or which stories are told and how they are framed.